


Mom

by mother_finch



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gen, mother-finch fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 08:14:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4780205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mother_finch/pseuds/mother_finch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>PROMPT: rootxshaw prompt-Shaw never knew what happened to Root's mom. After Root finally meets Shaw's mom, Shaw finally asks her what happened to hers. Root is reluctant to talk about it, but when she does she breaks down about how much she misses her mom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mom

Shaw says one final farewell to her mother- Root peeking her head out the gap between the door and its frame over Shaw’s shoulder with a smile- and allows the latch to click shut.

She stands there a moment, palms pressed against the door and Root’s breath grazing her neck, and lets out a microscopic, half-second smile. It had been years since she’d seen her mom last, and it secretly felt good to spend the day with her.  _Something that will never happen again,_  Shaw acknowledges with a front to reality, _but good all the same._

Shaw found herself wondering from time to time- on those rare occasions when numbers weren’t in need of saving- where her mother was. Where all of their families were. All of them were dead to the rest of the world- they had to be- but Shaw couldn’t help but ponder where they all were now. They’d all figured out about Grace, and Carter accidentally let slip the smallest detail into an ex from John’s past, but nothing was certain. All of their lives were mysteries, even to the people closest to them- even to themselves.

* * *

 

“Your mom’s real nice, Sam,” Root says, kind voice pulling Shaw from her rambling thoughts. Turning, she looks Root over, trying to see if there’s any sarcasm in the remark. There is none.

“Thanks,” Shaw responds at last, giving Root a sincere nod. Root keeps her eyes set on Shaw, who begins feeling the pressure build more and more from her gaze. Then, lungs starting to burn, Shaw walks back into the apartment, needing air. She comes to the window at the end of the hall, looking out as she takes in a large breath. For some reason unbeknownst to Shaw, Root could draw the air from her lungs without even doing a thing. It’s like a cruel magic trick, and Root never gets tired of using it.

“Everything okay?” Root asks, voice wandering away and towards the living room.

Shaw doesn’t respond, mind already swallowed back up in thought. Her vision swirls with photos of her mom. Her smile; her eyes; her laugh. Yet, the more she thinks, the more the picture blurs, until it is only a dark silhouette of a woman. This new figure doesn’t give off the vibe of her mother; instead, this woman radiates mystery. Something tells her it has to be Root’s mother.

 _Who is she?_ Shaw thinks to herself.  _What happened to her? What was she like?_ The questions swirl at a dizzying rate, zipping around her head like a sonic halo.  _Where is she now?_ Shaw licks her bottom lip, leaning her arms onto the sill of the window as she looks out at the black city. After collecting herself enough to no longer feel light headed, Shaw pushes away from the window, mind set and course steadfast on the living room.

When Shaw enters, she finds Root stretched out across the couch, looking up at the ceiling as the television’s screen leaves her face bathed in blue. Her brow is knit in thought, and she doesn’t seem to notice Shaw as she slinks with silent steps to the couch. Taking a seat beside Root, Shaw crosses her legs, feet sighing in relief as the day’s weight is finally taken off them.

“Root?” Shaw starts, unsure how to begin, or what question to ask first. All of them stick to the back of her throat like glue, yet all yearn to spit out at the same time. Root doesn’t answer, merely raises her eyebrows to show she’s listening. Shaw takes a moment, clears her throat, and continues. “Have you, uh, seen your mom lately?” Root rolls her tongue across her teeth, eyes searching the ceiling harder than before.

“No.”

Shaw inches a fraction closer, trying to get a better look at Root’s face without appearing to do so. “Would you want to?”

“No.” It’s that same, closed off tone, as if all emotions have suddenly shut down. Shaw purses her lips lightly in thought.

“Why not?” She asks- keeping her voice casual- and Root puffs air out of her nose in irritation, her head giving a microscopic shake.

“Don’t want to talk about it,” Root responds, tone just as it was for the other answers, and Shaw’s lip quirks down in a slant. All her questions seem to deflate in her chest, leaving her efforts hollow. With a sigh of her own, Shaw lets her head flop to the backrest, joining Root as they stare blankly up at the white paint, the television nothing more than white noise in their ears. Yet, something about this doesn’t feel right. The stubborn side of her inflames, irritated and indignant about being shut out so quickly.

“When’s the last time you saw her?” Shaw questions, tone casual as the absolute nothingness of the ceiling begins cradling her in a trance.

“I was eighteen.”

“You get into a fight?”

“I said I don’t want to  _talk_  about it,” Root spits harshly, words biting as their edges fill with bitter emotions, and Shaw rolls her head to the side to study Root’s profile. Her jaw is clenched now, eyes narrowed as she forces herself to tune the rest of the world out, and her chest moves too fast, like she’s only a few seconds from hyperventilating. Her eyes flicker to Shaw, then do a double take as she sees Shaw already watching her. They keep eye contact for a minute, every sound in the world vanishing, then Root looks to her hands.

“There wasn’t a fight,” she mumbles out, voice quiet enough that Shaw has to lean in a little to hear. “She… she died.” Shaw turns to stone, not breathing nor blinking, as the news sinks in. Such a dark secret to be kept for so many years, and Shaw takes a moment to let it run through her veins before reanimating. Looking away from Root, Shaw presses her lips together, trying to find something to say.

“I-”

“It’s fine,” Root interrupts with a zombie of a voice. Shaw is ready to protest, and Root must feel it, for both look to each other at the same time. “Really,” Root assures her, a borderline pathetic smile twitching on her lips like a computer glitch. “It’s fine.”

Shaw holds her breath, the mere thought of breathing being too loud, and tries to find the right thing to say. But she’d never been one for saying the right thing, and she finds that it’s no simple skill. Clenching her jaw together, she nods slowly, eyes shifting like slide puzzles.

“Okay,” Shaw responds semi-awkwardly at last, running her palms down the fronts of her jeans and standing. “If you  _do_  ever want to talk about it…”

“I  _won’t_ , Shaw.”

“… You know where I live.” The slightest alleviation of pressure comes to Shaw’s chest at seeing the hint of a smile emerge on Root’s face. Shaw debates upon smiling back, and the sensible, characteristic side of her wins.  Pressing her lips firmly together in an almost-frown, Shaw turns, heading from the room. Suddenly, hand washing the dishes seems like an excellent idea, and Shaw scurries to the sink. She runs the water- hoping that if she focuses enough on cleaning each cup and plate down to the microscopic level, that all the macroscopic things before her will fade away.

_________\ Person of Interest /__________

They don’t. Every thought sticks with her, clinging on harder with each determined scrub. The speculations snag her skin like rusted razor blades, and the secret worry digs a silent grave for her to lay her troubled head in. By the time she’s finished with the dishes, her fingers are raw and shriveled up like raisins in the sun. She checks the clock.

Ten thirty-five post meridiem. Shaw had washed ten minutes of utensils for nearly forty. She’d been hoping- in a dreading sort of way- for Root to walk into the kitchen, ready to talk. Or, at least, more ready than before. However, so much time has passed Shaw finds the chance slim to none.

Wiping her hands on a nearby towel, Shaw rolls her neck, willing the stress to leak from her stiff muscles. The lights are off, something that somehow escaped her mind completely, and she treads with careful steps towards the wall. When she feels herself getting close, she places a hand forward, fingers tentatively stretching; waiting to feel the slight scratch of paint. Instead, they find something soft and warm.

Recoiling her hand, Shaw instinctively drops to a defensive stand. Feet grounded, eyes narrowed and lips pulled in a snarl, Shaw begins to throw a punch into the dark.

Bright white light floods the kitchen.

Shaw stops mid-swing, eyes shutting tight as the luminescence turns her retinas to ash. She pushes the pain away, her first-born nature screaming at her to continue the fight; however, when she finally focuses on the figure, she drops her hands instantly. Shaking her head, Shaw lets out an annoyed breath, heart thudding harshly in her chest from a surge of adrenaline.

“For God’s  _sake_ , Root,” Shaw sighs, rolling her eyes. “The hell are you  _doing_ , lurking in the kitchen?” Root’s lips part in astonishment, although her eyes spark with amusement.

“I wasn’t  _lurking_ ,” Root argues comically, flipping her dark hair over one shoulder as she leans in towards Shaw conversationally.

“What do you want,” Shaw demands in a tired, bland tone. Root’s eyes instantly lose their flirtatious glow, and Shaw gives herself a mental smack.

“Just… to talk,” Root responds cautiously, leaning back against the wall with extra care.

“About?” Again, Shaw sees red at her overly impatient tone. Root doesn’t seem to notice; she’s too busy fighting with her own mind to realize much else.

“My mom,” she answers shortly, words thick on her tongue. “I was- I was harsh earlier, and I-”

“You really don’t have to talk about it,” Shaw tells her honestly, eyes as assuring as she can make them.

“I know,” Root responds, peering down at her hands for a moment. She takes in a large breath. Lets it out slowly. “I want to.” Shaw looks her over a minute, trying to sort her out. She’d never been able to truly decode Root, and this time is no different. And so, Shaw hoists herself onto the kitchen counter, crossing her legs at her heels; fingers curling over the edge of the granite as she looms in Root’s direction.

“She was sick- since I can remember, she’d always been sick. It was the little things at first. The first day of first grade, I had to ride in with my neighbor because she had a bad cold. I remember not thinking much about it, just that I was upset she didn’t get to come.” Root flashes a sad, self-loathing smile. “The first day turned into the first three days, and then the first three weeks. She’d always tell me it was her bad immune system, but that doesn’t mean much to a seven year old.”

Shaw can see the pain in Root’s eyes as she is transported to a place outside of their apartment. Her eyes reflect film reels of an old town with rusted swings and green grass and skies a sickly yellow with the heat of summer.

“She got a little better, on and off. That summer, we went to the park a lot. Every day, actually. Even- even if I didn’t want to go, she’d tell me it was our daily exercise, and that I’d love it once we got there. It was a mile walk every day each way. Sometimes it took us twenty minutes; sometimes it took us fifty. She’d walk slower, body stiff like a person made of machine parts without oil between the gears. I’d always run ahead, and she’d yell at me not to, mechanic tin fingers holding onto her un-oiled machine knees as she tried to keep up. When she wasn’t mechanic, she had bad cramps. She would double over a lot, stopping to breathe and rubbing at her muscles. She always told me she was sore from walking every day, but…”

“But that wasn’t it,” Shaw finishes, voice hushed with the gravity of the recollection, “was it.” Root shakes her head, eyes closing a moment. Her fingers are pressed to the wall for support, head resting against it’s cool surface as she drags more memories to the surface of her brain.

“By the next summer, we barely made it more than two blocks before she told me we had to turn around and go home,” Root tells her, haunted eyes opening once more. “Headaches. She complained that the sun was too bright a lot of the time, and took to wearing sunglasses whenever we went out. When fourth grade started up, she would only leave the house for work and groceries. She was always tired, walking around as if the weight of the world was connected to her ankles like a ball and chain. That was the year she started letting me go out on my own. On the weekends I told her I was going to the park, but I always walked the four or so miles to the library. Our town was small, but we still managed to live far away from  _everything_.” She chuckles bitterly at that, and Shaw wonders if she should stop Root from speaking. She can see, plain as day, Root’s deterioration. As the years eat through her layers like acid, Root’s tall, independent form begins to melt. But Shaw can’t stop her now. What started off as a slow  _chug chug chug_  turns into a train barreling down the tracks, steam whistle screaming as it slices through the wind.

“During the weekdays I didn’t have to lie- I just stayed at the school until the late bus would come. I could get home by four fifty-three that way, and my mom never walked in the door until five thirty. They had this- this computer lab there, and I used to sit in there for hours. It worked great for me- until my mom called out of work.” Pain pierces Root’s pupils, leaving the ebony ink to turn the rest of her eyes a terrifying black. “She had had a freak fever out of no where, and her chest had been hurting lately. She couldn’t take deep breaths. She always told me that it was because she was out of shape, and she was glad that I still went to the park on the weekends to stay strong. But that day she stayed at home, and when I didn’t show up at the right time, she drove to the school. I thought for sure I was done for,” Root tells her, shaking her head. Past the hurt, Shaw can hear the adoration in her tone, this memory clearly a fond one.

“But she wasn’t mad. She didn’t yell. She just… walked into the school, asked where she could find me, and did her mechanical walk to the computer lab. I remember seeing her, and instantly wanting to hide. I froze when she saw me, and relaxed when she smiled. That was the, uh, only thing that wasn’t robotic. Her smile was human.” Root swallows, rolls her jaw, then swallows once more. “She asked me what I was doing, and I told her, and she asked if she could watch. I was nervous, but she seemed really impressed. She told me- she told me to keep at it. And I couldn’t figure out for the  _life_  of me why.”

Root brings two ginger fingers to her temple, but pushes on with determined force. “She said that computers were my talent. My mom always told me to-… she told me to follow my talents.” Root’s shoulders sag, and she runs her tongue over her teeth. Then, with a more silent and scornful voice, she adds, “I bet she never thought my talents would be killing and stealing.”

Shaw sits straight up on the counter, eyes widening the slightest bit. “You can’t think tha-”

“That was the last time I remember her leaving the house,” Root says, cutting her off. She looks up at Shaw, eyes locking onto hers in a way that says she heard Shaw clearly, but has no intentions of acknowledging it. “Headaches all the time; too sore to get out of bed; her joints hurt; too confused to keep a job anyway; and fevers even though she was always cold. The lights had to stay off in our house all the time because they were too bright for her. From then on out, I got the groceries alone, ate alone, went anywhere I wanted without having to ask. Most of the time, my mom was asleep when I left and asleep when I came back, so it didn’t matter. It made me so- so  _mad_ ,” Root spits, self-hatred causing her words to bite.

“I was angry to see her, just laying in bed, leaving me to the rest of the world. I spent as much time as I could away from the house after that. I stayed at the library everyday until it closed, and took the longest way home possible.”

Shaw isn’t even sure how to react.  _What do you say to someone who’s lived a nightmare?_

“I liked to act like it didn’t effect me,” Root says slowly, each word becoming extremely calculated. “I liked to sit at the same computer everyday and figure things out. Everything about them just… made so much more  _sense_. I learned that computers don’t lie. The kids at school lied, my mom lied,  _I_ lied- but a computer can’t lie. You put in one thing and it spits out another. I liked thinking in terms of code, and how all the people in the world were just flaws in the system. In the time I developed all of that, years had gone by. I had lived for years alone in a house with a mechanical ghost, wondering what sort of bad code made kept her ticking.”

Shaw’s stomach feels as if milk is curdling inside, and all of her is overcome with a confusing nauseousness. She shifts uneasily in place, a dark pit opening within her, swallowing up any warmth left in her body.  _All the symptoms_ , Shaw thinks, dread trickling into her veins. _It’s an easy thing to spot with so many symptoms_. She blinks a few times, forcing her face to remain neutral as the next little piece drifts into her brain like poison.  _It would’ve been treatable_. Shaw coughs.

“Did you… Did you know what she had?” Shaw asks quietly. She can see the hurt in Root’s eyes as they grow red, rimming with too many emotions that have been bottled up far too long.

“I had an idea,” Root answers, voice suddenly distant. _Like I’m losing her to the past._ “I called a doctor, but he said it was a viral thing, and that there was nothing he could do. But  _I_  knew better,” Root tells Shaw wistfully. “I’d spent  _months_  researching everything I could, and I  _knew_  it was worse than what he had made it out to be.” Shaw nods, and silence falls over them both. “She died… when I was… I left right after her death. And you know right about where I ended up.”

“Yeah,” Shaw replies, “you ended up holding an iron to my face.” Root’s lips pull in a weak smile, all the while fighting to remain closed for fear of emotions spilling out. Her eyes become glossy, and she can’t look in the same place for more than a second.

“I treated her like she didn’t exist for so long, but…” Root stops, banging her head softly against the wall in frustration. “I-.. I  _miss_  her, Shaw.” Even past every numbing technique in the book, Shaw can still feel the ache as her heart gives a little tug in two. She has a million thoughts, but not a thing to say; yet she’s unsure if words would do any good anyway.

“I got to thinking of her so much like mechanical pieces. Every time I brought her anything, she’d always ask me to tell her about codes. The same- same stupid ones I  _always_  told her that she could  _never_  remember- and then told me to follow my talent. And she would smile at me; that last little thing that kept her human to me. But then, one day, that was jerky little motions too, and all I could think was that my talent was computers. Taking code and making things work again. If she was so made up of wiring and programing, then maybe I could  _fix_  her- I could make  _her_  work again, too. It’s stupid, I know.”

“It’s not,” Shaw says, shaking her head. “It’s… nice.” With that, Root peels herself from the wall, takes a small step forward and a pivot, and rests her head sadly on Shaw’s shoulder. Her icy nose burrows into the heat of Shaw’s neck, and Shaw can feel the smallest trembling against her.  _Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t-_

_Shit._

“I couldn’t fix her,” Root whispers, although the agony is deafening. “People  _can’t_  fix  _people_.”

“But we can try,” Shaw murmurs back, wrapping her arms slowly around Root’s waist and drawing her in. “And you did a lot of that.” Root sniffles against Shaw’s shirt, bringing her hands around Shaw’s neck and squeezing tight.

“I changed my mind,” Root says, voice muffled by her hair and Shaw’s shoulder. “I don’t want to talk about my mom.” Shaw gives a sorrowfully amused puff of air from her nose, leaning her cheek atop Root’s head.

“Okay,” she replies, looking straight ahead to the suffocating blackness just outside the window. “We won’t talk about it, then.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Also, for anyone wondering, I depicted a severe form of untreated Lupus as what Root’s mom died from. They talked about her being sick and dying when Root was a little younger but not a little kid, but since they never said what (as far as I know?) I just used the symptoms from this. Didn’t say she had Lupus in the prompt for the same reason I never give Shaw’s mom a name- I just have no evidence to put names to them! xD   
> Source: https://www.womenshealth.gov/publications/our-publications/fact-sheet/lupus.html


End file.
